Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

this too.
    “Hey, we need to talk,” I echoed my thoughts
as soon as he was in mumbling range.
    He looked up at me with curious eyes and
nodded. “Yes, we do. I thought we had a strict no outsider’s
policy, Hendrix. What the hell?”
    “Come on,” I grunted. “I couldn’t leave them
down there.”
    Vaughan thought that over, but he knew I was
right. “Fine, but now what? What if they want something?”
    “Well?” I gestured over at the girls perched
on a register counter, laughing and talking freely. “They might
want something. But they should. Look at them, they need a whole
lot of somethings.”
    “You want to let them have access to our
supplies?”
    “And I’m thinking we let them stay the night
here.”
    “You’ve lost your mind,” Nelson commented
dryly.
    “No, I think he’s found his heart,” Vaughan
joked but then grew serious. “You’re serious about this?”
    I shrugged. “I can’t send them back out
there. I would never forgive myself.” For more reasons than
one .
    “Fine, then they can stay, yeah?” Vaughan
stated but left it in a question- as was his way. Sure, he was our
supreme leader, but he always gave us a chance to speak up. “For
just tonight.”
    “I think it’s a good idea,” I agreed. “They
look like they haven’t slept in a while. At least not straight
through the night.”
    “Sure, it’s fine with me,” Nelson nodded.
“Anyone have anything against that?”
    Nobody said anything.
    “Alright, go tell them,” Vaughan ordered me
with an amused raise of his eyebrows.
    “That’s probably not a good idea,” I tried to
remain casual. “She’s a little weirded out by me.”
    “She?” Nelson picked up immediately on my
slip. “Not they?”
    “They,” I growled back. “ They’re a
little weirded out by me.”
    “Why is that?” Harrison asked
suspiciously.
    “They have this fear of being raped,” I
admitted dryly.
    “By you?” King barked out a laugh and
Harrison joined him.
    “What so funny about that?” I demanded. Not
that I wanted to be considered a rapist or anything, but I didn’t
think the concept was funny .
    “Because you’re like…. you’re like…. asexual.
You wouldn’t rape them! You wouldn’t know how!” King explained.
    What the hell? Bastards. All of them.
    “You don’t even know what that word means,” I
growled causing them to howl with more laughter. I wasn’t asexual.
At least not anymore.
    “I can tell them,” Vaughan cut in. He turned
around but not before throwing out, “Since they obviously make
Hendrix nervous.”
    I let out a frustrated sigh but followed my
idiot brothers over to talk to them.
    Vaughan led with a question, “When’s the last
time you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”
    Reagan bit her lip and looked at her friend.
“Define good night ,” she challenged.
    “When was the last time you slept the entire
night through?” he clarified.
    Neither of them responded. They looked at
each other and then back at us with blank, lost expressions. And
that’s when I knew they hadn’t had a good night sleep since this
whole thing began.
    Vaughan drew the same conclusion. “That’s
what I thought. You can’t stay with us permanently.” That part was
for me, I thought. “But you can spend the night. We will give you a
full night’s rest before you move on in the morning.”
    They just kept staring at us and I wondered
if their fear of strangers went deeper than they appeared.
    “Explain the raping thing, Vaughan.” I told
him.
    A knowing smile stretched across Vaughan’s
face and I bristled with irritation. He was going to lord this over
my head until the end of time. I knew it. And it was because I was
really pushing for the girls to stay. Ever since we embarked on
this survival journey, I’d let Vaughan take the lead- for the most
part- kept my opinions to myself and gone with the flow as much as
I could. Standing up for something, especially something involving
outsiders and girls for that